Jim Hightower’s Radio Lowdown
Why Should Chuck Schumer Choose Maine’s US Senator?
The Democratic Party establishment is rolling out its arsenal of big funders and political consultants, trying to defeat… Democrats.
Huh? Yes, led by Sen. Chuck “Don’t-Rock-the-Corporate-Boat” Schumer, the party’s Washington hierarchy has been working to eliminate upstart Democratic contenders who are unabashedly progressive and popular! These candidates are generating new grassroots energy and hope for the party by bluntly challenging Washington’s meek, business-as-usual politics that Schumer embodies.
Pundits say Democrats need to find candidates who can appeal to workers. Well, here’s one who is full-blooded working class: Graham Platner. A 41-year old military combat veteran, Platner is a plain-spoken oyster farmer who’s running right at “the oligarchy – the billionaires who pay for it and the politicians who sell us out.” Platner’s fiery populist spirit has sparked statewide grassroots support, volunteers, funding, and enthusiasm that Maine Democrats have not had in years.
But, uninvited, here came Chuck – lugging his ponderous wet blanket of high-dollar corporate politics to the state. Trying to stop a real democrat from being the party’s nominee, Schumer recruited Maine’s lame-duck, milquetoast governor to run against Platner, knowing she would not challenge the corporate order. He raised truckloads of corporate cash for her, hoping to suffocate the oysterman’s populist uprising.
But by assaulting Platner with a barrage of out-of-state of corporate money, Schumer and his hand-picked candidate are actually assaulting the “little-d,” working-class democrats who’ve rallied to the maverick. Attacking your own constituents is an odd strategy, and sure enough, it doesn’t seem to be selling in Maine – a recent poll of likely Democratic voters shows Platner with a 38-point lead over Schumer’s choice to be Maine’s senator.
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Blast from the Past: Hightower, Molly Ivins and friends at Scholz Garten in 1994
Greetings, Lowdowners—Deanna here.
This spring, we’re doing something a little different. Over the next few weeks, we’re opening the gates a bit — giving free subscribers a taste of some of the exclusive stories, video, and behind-the-scenes Hightower that paid subscribers get regularly. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, consider this your invitation to see what you’ve been missing.
And we’re kicking it off with a doozy.
Reader Elliot K. shared with us this video from C-SPAN that we didn’t know existed—and it’s a rollicking time capsule that you don’t want to miss. Hightower hosts a storytelling evening over beers with friends Molly Ivins, Ed Wendler, Ty Fain, Buck Wood, and more, plus a surprise visit (and great story) from State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos.
Scholz Garten in Austin, the setting for this gathering, is historic for a number of reasons, but it’s long been a watering hole for politicos of all stripes. As Buck Wood, then the director of Common Cause Texas, explains:
Some of [the legislative bills] were literally hammered out right down here in the beer garden. There’s been some great political fights here, there’s been some pretty good fist fights here for years. Usually over political matters.
There are too many stories in here nail the spirit of Texas politics, but my favorite is a spicy one from heroine Molly Ivins that I’d never heard before:
One of great ongoing literary attractions of Scholz Beer Garden is the graffiti in the restrooms. And I myself have never frequented the men’s room here, no matter how serious the cause. I do remember an exchange. This was back when Frank Erwin, he was chairman of the UT Board of Regents, he was Lyndon Johnson’s man, and he really was in many ways a miserable sumbitch. I went to the ladies room one night and there was a note on the wall saying, “Do a good deed today, give Frank Erwin the clap.” Underneath which somebody else had written, “Give it to him? Hell, charge him for it!”
Happy Friday everyone—let us know your favorite parts in the comments.
PS—If you haven’t seen the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins,” get thee to a streaming service immediately!
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
Public Safety Down, CEO Pay Up. Corporations Play “Rig the System”
To see how the game of “Rig the System” is played, consider the shameful corporate gaming of the horror of California wildfires that have been devouring lives and entire communities.
Many of the worst fires have been ignited by the faulty wires, transformers, and other poorly functioning equipment of such profiteering electric utilities as Southern California Edison. The safety failures of this multibillion-dollar giant have been so awful that state lawmakers and regulators have rushed out fire-protection laws – not for the people, but for the corporate owners! A 2019 law literally protects utilities from paying for fire damages they cause, instead passing the costs to state taxpayers.
Wait, says Edison, if our annual safety record is poor, our top executives are punished with a cut in their annual bonuses. Ouch! Well, not really – the reduction is capped at 5 percent.
Take last year’s fire that destroyed nearly every home and building in the town of Altadena, killing 19 people. “It’s just a tragedy,” lamented Edison’s CEO, though he admits it was sparked by an Edison transmission line. Sure enough, the chief “suffered” a 5-percent bonus hickey. Hold your pity, though, for that means he still collected 95 percent of his 2025 performance bonus, plus pocketing his extravagant salary, stock options, and benefits. In all, the man-in-charge of this corporate-made “tragedy” walked away with nearly $14 million in personal pay.
Meanwhile, Edison went to the Public Utility Commission, demanding that its customers be forced to pay 10 percent more on their electric bills. To keep score on utilities rigging the system, go to TURN, The Utility Reform Network: turn.org.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe
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Meet Jim Hightower.
Looking for photos and more of Hightower? Check out the media kit.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and New York Times best-selling author, Jim Hightower has spent five decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.
Hightower is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots.
Hightower’s radio commentaries are carried on stations throughout the country, with a majority being carried on community radio stations in rural areas, where a democratic populist voice is craved and needed. He also writes two rousing weekly syndicated columns and publishes much of his work on Substack, blasting through the corporate media blockade to deliver an economic populist perspective to events.
He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.
Hightower frequently appears on television and radio programs, bringing a hard-hitting populist viewpoint that rarely gets into the mass media. In addition, he works closely with the alternative media, and in all of his work he keeps his ever-ready Texas humor up front, practicing the credo of an old Yugoslavian proverb: “You can fight the gods and still have fun.”
Hightower was raised in Denison, Texas, in a family of small business people, tenant farmers, and working folks. A graduate of the University of North Texas, he worked in Washington as legislative aide to Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas; he then co-founded the Agribusiness Accountability Project, a public interest project that focused on corporate power in the food economy; and he was national coordinator of the 1976 “Fred Harris for President” campaign. Hightower then returned to his home state, where he became editor of the feisty biweekly, The Texas Observer. He served as director of the Texas Consumer Association before running for statewide office and being elected to two terms as Texas Agriculture Commissioner (1983-1991).
During the 90’s, Hightower became known as “America’s most popular populist,” developing his radio commentaries, hosting two radio talk shows, writing books, launching his newsletter, giving fiery speeches coast to coast, and otherwise speaking out for the American majority that’s being locked out economically and politically by the elites.
As political columnist Molly Ivins said, “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child — mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”
Books
The New York Times bestselling author and America’s funniest activist gives the lowdown on how to put up-not shut up-in the fight for our future.
Hightower, the country’s #1 populist, has picked up some useful advice over the years, from “never eat at a café featuring ‘bargain kebobs'” to “never hit a man with glasses; hit him with something much heavier.” As he and his longtime co-conspirator Susan DeMarco have rambled through grassroots America, however, they’ve also come up with more serious words of wisdom to share here, namely: question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!
Their book introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well. Hightower and DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.
Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.
Hightower and DeMarco are at their contrarian, sharp-witted, and straight-shooting best as they celebrate the triumph of grassroots gumption over the tight-fisted grip of corporate control.
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America is at an historic divide between rulers and rulees and the rulees are restless. Hightower’s THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES is an epistle to the American people about vision and choices, and it’s a clarion call to action. The question Jim Hightower is asking is: What kind of country do you want America to be? Not only for you, but for your children and theirs? In THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES Hightower takes on the Bushites, the Wobblycrats, and the corporate Kleptocrats, digging up behind-the scenes dirt that the corporate media overlooks like BushCo’s “Friday Night Massacres”, what’s happened to our food, and the Bush plan for empire. Also drawing on Hightower’s Rolling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour, Hightower has tapped into the thriving activist networks that are our country’s grassroots muscle, and his book tells their uplifting stories of retaking control of their communities.
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The bestselling grassroots guru is back with his incisive take on the state of the union and life today in the good ol’ U.S.A.
America in 2004 is color coded and it’s not just a matter of red, white, and blue. The terror alert bounces from yellow to orange. The economy offers up a hundred shades of red ink. The environment is turning brown. National security is cloaked in gray shadows. And, as he did in the bestselling Thieves in High Places, Jim Hightower covers it all with uncommon insight, political fearlessness, and laugh-out-loud humor.
America’s #1 populist gives us Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush a hard-hitting, fact-filled review of the real state of the union that you won’t get from the establishment media. With his daily radio commentaries and award-winning monthly newsletter, no one has chronicled the madness of King George the W, the wimpiness of corporate Democrats, and the aggressive avarice of Wall Street with the thoroughness and tenacity of Hightower. Now he brings that investigative punch into this wild and woolly hook of fiery essays.
With his satirical “Six Perfectly Good Reasons to Re-elect George W. Bush”; his mix of damning indictments and uplifting stories; and side bars, cartoons, games, and puzzles, Hightower has clone the impossible: he has created a subversive read that makes politics fun again.
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With his aw-shucks charisma and no-nonsense attitude, he dishes out what’s wrong with the eroding integrity of our democracy: politicians for sale to the highest bidder, the economic boom of the 90s not trickling down to the regular folks and more corporate scandals than you can shake a stick at. Offers a compelling collection of Hightower talks plus the best of his daily “Common-Sense Commentaries” on radio, all with an introduction by the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Jim Hightower, America’s favorite subversive, is still mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. But he will give you a sizeable piece of his mind on Election 2000. This plain-talking, name-naming, podium-pounding populist zeros in on everything that ails us, from the global economy and media to big business and election winners everywhere. In his hard hitting commentary and hilarious anecdotes, Hightower spares no one, including the scared cows — and especially the politicians — who helped steer us into this mess in the first place. An equal opportunity muckrucker and a conscientious agitator for “We the People”, Hightower inspires us to take charge again, build a new politics for a better tommorow — and have a lot of laughs along the way.
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Revised, and with a New Introduction by the Author
“I am an agitator, and an agitator is the center post in a washing machine that gets the dirt out.”
–Jim Hightower
Hightower is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore! He’s also funny as hell, and in this book he focuses his sharp Texas wit, populist passion, and native smarts on America’s political, economic, scientific, and media establishments. In There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, Hightower shows not only what’s wrong, but also how to fix it, offering specific solutions and calling for a new political movement of working families and the poor to “take America back from the bankers and bosses, the big shots and bastards.”
“If you don’t read another book about what’s wrong with this country for the rest of your life, read this one. I think it’s the best and most important book about out public life I’ve read in years.”
–Molly Ivins, author of Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?“When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president? Will somebody please tell me? When do we get to vote for Jim Hightower for president?.”
–Michael Moore, author of Downsize This!“Listen to Jim Hightower. His is a two-fisted, rambunctious voice unafraid to speak truth to power, eloquently and clearly…He’s one of the best.”
–Studs Terkel
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- Digital versions: Android, Apple and Kindle
Audiobook on Audible.com